“I’m the uncomfortable truth-teller in the room,” Gioia added as an aside. “The contemporary Catholic Church in America, and everywhere, lost its connection with art and beauty.”“For centuries, millennia really, the Church was a patron of the arts, and understood that beauty was an essential medium for its message,” he said.
Friday, April 26, 2019
Short answer — yes, indeed …
… Should Catholics care about poetry? (Hat tip, Dave Lull)
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I don't know who it was, but Chesterton, Knox, and Santayana seem likely candidates, who said that the Church employed whoever was to hand, sometimes great artists, sometimes hacks. In the fat years, one had Thomas Aquinas writing the hymns or Leonardo painting the frescoes. But there were a lot of lean years, and still are. Heaven help the man whose faith depends on the esthetic values of ICEL.
ReplyDeleteI think it's always employed both, whether the years were fat or lean. As a cradle Catholic I am well aware that ordination to the priesthood — and elevation to the the hierarchy — often doesn't even bestow civility, let alone sanctity or aesthetic sensitivity. The Church, after all, is a gathering of sinners. By the way, what does ICEL stand for?
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